Martin Halle’s vimeo channel offers an interesting split-screen of a bridge disaster VFX sequence for Final Destination 5, that shows the live action and green screen elements. Notice how the real truck helps sell the effect.
The link to video is below.

watch on vimeo

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Cool video about how scientist Kip Thorn collaborated with the folks at Double Negative to create a scientifically true visualization of black holes for Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar.

The key concept is from Einstein’s General Relativity: gravity bends light. And therefore the intense gravity around a black hole acts a distorting lens for the light behind and around it.

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The video from Project Otome demonstrates the scanning of a model’s face, then a live projection of video of different make-up styles on the face, as well as weirder CGI renderings. The technical accomplishment is the ability to match the video to the face as it moves in real-time.

Otome is a collaboration between Japanese media artist Nobumichi Asai, makeup artist Hiroto Kuwahara & French digital image engineer Paul Lacroix.

OMOTE / REAL-TIME FACE TRACKING & PROJECTION MAPPING from something wonderful on Vimeo.

The effect is stunning and brings to mind one of my favorite works of my friend Michael Naimark, Displacements, where he painted a room white, then rotated a film projector in its center that “painted” the white furniture and walls with colored images of themselves.

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links:

video on vimeo

Tech Times: Omote face tracking and projection mapping system is amazingly creepy: Here’s why
Nobumichiasai web site
naimark.net: Displacements

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The director of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes reveals 2 interesting tidbits in a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) online dialogue:

1. Reeves wanted to shoot anamorphic, in part because of the narrower depth of field.
But Reeves was told he couldn’t shoot anamorphic because the lenses didn’t match closely enough for 3D work.
He then decided to frame 1.85, so that he would use longer lenses for the same horizontal composition than if he had shot widescreen, and therefore achieve less depth of field.

2. Reeves roughly estimates the cost of a 5-second shot of virtual apes to be 50-60 K dollars. The apes were rendered with performance capture by Peter Jackson’s New Zealand VFX facility, WETA.

The cinematography is by Michael Seresin

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links

via Germain Lussier at Slash films

http://bit.ly/1lMZfml

Reddit:
AMA with Matt Reeves & Michael Giachinno

http://bit.ly/1nRav57

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A very innovative promo for the movie Carrie made on YouTube

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